


The Weight of Family History

by Buffintruda



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, High School, Japanese-American Character, Nonbinary Character, POV Character of Color, Queer Character, Racism, nikkeijin, talks about japanese internment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 04:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12051441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruda/pseuds/Buffintruda
Summary: Or the five times someone learned something about Mr. Morita’s grandfather and the one time they already knew.





	The Weight of Family History

**Author's Note:**

> Peter's principal in the Homecoming was played by the same actor as Jim Morita in Captain America, plus the principal had a picture of a Jim Morita in his office. A lot of people have theorized that the principal is Jim Morita's grandson, so that's what this is based off of.  
> Allegiance the musical was a big inspiration for parts of this, so if you're interested in musicals and Japanese Internment, I'd recommend checking that out.  
> Lastly, I've only seen Homecoming once, so I apologize for any details from it that I've gotten wrong.

**1**

Principal Morita of the Midtown School of Science and Technology kept a black-and-white photograph of a soldier on his office wall. He had hung it there on his first day at the school, and there it had remained ever since.

It wasn’t large or colorful or bizarre by any definition, and logically, the picture should have been unobtrusive. Yet, perhaps it was the placement above his desk or the solemn gravity that came with the subject matter, but it seemed to attract more attention than it should have gotten.

The first person who had ever asked him about it was one of the staff members soon after Mr. Morita had finished moving in.

“Have you settled into your new office comfortably?” Ms. Wilson asked as she entered the office. She looked disconcertingly like Mr. Morita’s high school girlfriend’s mother. It made him feel even more awkward about the whole situation.

“Yes, thank you,” Mr. Morita said with more confidence than he felt. His staff didn't need to know that he had spent the last minute minutes panicking because he couldn't find where he had placed any of his pens.

“Good, just checking in. First days are always hard. And this is the first time you've been a principal right?”

Mr. Morita smiled. “I am a bit of a newbie. I’ve heard you have been working here for many years, so I'm sure I can count on your assistance should I need any.” He hoped he wouldn't, at least for the big things. Even if he did need her help, pride would likely keep him from saying anything. But flattering the people who worked with him would only do good.

“Twenty three years here,” Ms. Wilson said with a bit of pride. “Who’s the picture of?”

Mr. Morita followed her gaze to the photograph of his grandfather. “My grandfather. Jim Morita. He served in World War II.”

“My father did too,” she offered. Mr. Morita couldn’t help but wonder which side of the world he had been deployed in, the Pacific or Europe.

“It’s a reminder,” Mr. Morita said softly, though he did not say of what. He switched back to a more businesslike tone. “I appreciate you coming here. It's nice to get to know the staff a little better before school start.”

“It's nice for the staff to get to know their principal too,” Ms. Wilson laughed. “I'll see you around.”

“Good bye,” Mr. Morita said as she left.

The exchange was far from the most exciting one Mr. Morita had ever had, but it was the first regarding the topic of the photograph. What he told her became his typical explanation when people asked about the picture who didn’t already know who the man it portrayed was. It told them what they wanted to hear, and it was simple enough that people didn’t continue to ask questions. After all, Mr. Morita was a busy man, and he didn’t have time to give the full history to every person who wondered.

* * *

**2**

Talking to misbehaving students was not Mr. Morita’s favorite part of the job. Most of the time, he knew the things he said had no chance of getting through to them. It was frustrating to see the students hurt others or hurt their own prospects in life by continuously making bad decisions when nothing he could say would help or change anything. But it was something that came up rather frequently.

Ryan Whittleman wasn’t a bad person, but he did show a complete disregard for authority that infuriated teachers. The freshman was sent to the principal’s office one November morning for talking back yet again. Mr. Morita had given him a lecture, trying to convince the boy that life would be much easier on him if he didn’t share his every thought of contempt towards people who had power over him. By this point, he had given up trying to tell the boy to be polite. Simply not talking back was a difficult enough goal to reach.

“You just don’t get it,” Ryan grumbled. “It’s not that easy when they’re all pretentious douchebags.”

Mr. Morita stopped himself from telling the kid to show a little more respect. He had tried that before, and it had never worked.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Mr. Morita started.

“Hey,” Ryan interrupted, with the determination of a kid trying to avoid a lecture they had heard a dozen times before. “Is it true that the guy in the picture bombed Pearl Harbor?”

Not expecting such a comment, it struck him like a pail of ice water. Mr. Morita nearly flinched. Too many times as a child, other kids had torn him apart for sharing the ethnicity as those who had attacked Pearl Harbor. He had been hoping that as the principal of a school, such remarks wouldn’t be so prevalent.

“If you looked carefully, you would see that his uniform is an American one, not Japanese,” Mr. Morita replied, perhaps too coldly to be addressing a student. He refused to be made ashamed once again of his family when he should be proud of them. “Japanese-Americans did exist and fight for the US in that time. In fact, my grandfather was one of the Howling Commandos, who fought alongside Captain America. You may recognize his face from your history books.”

For the first time Mr. Morita had ever seen him, Ryan looked almost ashamed. “It was just a rumour,” he muttered defensively. “I just wanted to see if it was true.”

“Making assumptions based on race is never a good thing to do,” he said in a calmer, more educational tone of voice. “Perhaps you should tell your fellow students that. You should be getting back to class soon.”

As Ryan left, Mr. Morita made a mental note to ask the history teachers that year to be sure to cover the Japanese Internment and the Japanese-Americans who had volunteered and been drafted to fight in the war. It was something that should be more widely known.

* * *

**3**

“Come in,” Mr. Morita called out.

Amisha Alfarizi walked into the office and stiffly sat down on the chair in front of his desk.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded, not meeting his eyes.

“I thought you would want to know that the student who pulled your hijab off was suspended for a week. I’m incredibly sorry that you had to go through something as humiliating as that and that the school couldn’t do more for you.”

“Thank you,” Amisha said quietly, still looking uncomfortable. She had never crossed Mr. Morita’s radar before and he had a feeling that she hated the attention almost as much as she hated the whole situation.

“Please let me know if anything like this happens again,” Mr. Morita told her gently. “If any student is harassing you or hurting you, whether it's verbally or physically or in any other way, tell me. You should never have gone through something like that in the first place. I want to do everything I can so that all of my students feel safe at this school.”

“Okay,” Amisha said, unconvinced. “Can I leave now? I have Calculus in five minutes.”

Mr. Morita stared at her for a moment. She had every right to be suspicious and defensive, but he wanted to earn enough of her trust to make the school better. “Do you know what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II?”

“Uhh...” She seemed thrown off by the question, and she looked at him in confusion.

“In the spring of 1942, soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, people of Japanese descent were forced to leave their homes to be imprisoned in camps guarded by soldiers. People who were only one sixteenth Japanese were put in internment camps. They thought that loyalty to the Emperor of Japan was genetic. Two thirds of them were born American citizens. Even the first-generation immigrants showed no real signs of wanting to sabotage this country or spy on it, and yet they were all rounded up and imprisoned. Later in the war, the Americans even drafted many of the men in the internment camps, expecting people who had been betrayed by their country to fight and die for it.

“My grandfather volunteered to fight on his own.” Mr. Morita gestured at the photograph on the wall. Amisha’s eyes followed his finger to rest on the picture. She was less wary now, and he could tell that she had an inkling of his purpose for telling her all of this. “He and his family had everything taken away from them and were sent to live in horrible, cramped quarters hundreds of miles away from their home. But he was loyal to his country and wanted to fight the Nazis and Imperial Japan. He wanted to prove that he was just as loyal of an American as any white person was, hoping that maybe if he fought hard enough, the government would see how mistaken their fears were and release his family and all the other Japanese-Americans. It didn't work, of course, even though he fought with Captain America himself.

“I know the hostility towards Muslims and immigrants is increasing every day, and that it affects your life negatively in a hundred different ways. But I want you to know that my promise to try to make this school safe for everyone isn’t just empty words. I can’t know what it feels like to have the whole country hate you so blatantly for what you are in the way that you do, but my ancestors knew something similar. I can’t be everywhere at once, so I understand if you are concerned that telling me the problems that you face won’t solve them. I won’t lie to you and say that they will be easily fixed. But if your hesitation comes because you don’t think I will want to try anything, then I thought you should know the reasons why I, more than many administrators, will do everything I can to stop this kind of thing. I will never be too busy to hear what you have to say.”

“I understand,” Amisha said, and Mr. Morita thought he saw her grow a little less closed off.

“Good.” Mr. Morita smiled at her, relieved. His heart was still beating too fast from the story of his grandfather. It felt very personal, but one of the reasons he had hung the photograph on the wall was to remind him to be strong like his grandfather had been and to stand up to prejudice and what was wrong. And he truly believed that he would take a step to improving the school if he fostered trust between his students so that they would feel comfortable coming to him. Teachers didn't see everything, after all, and Mr. Morita couldn't fix a problem that he didn't know of.

“But I really do need to get to my Calculus class.”

“Of course,” Mr. Morita said. “I’m sorry for keeping you up this long. I’ll write you a pass. My door is always open, if you need it.”

“Thank you,” Amisha said, and this time it sounded more genuine.

* * *

**4**

The giant, carnivorous slug that was attacking the school wasn't leaving behind a lot of structural damage, nor did it seem intent on killing any bystanders, but the sticky slime that it trailed behind would cover the floor and walls for days. Water did nothing to clear up the slime, they discovered when it set off a fire alarm in the cafeteria.

Mr. Morita was in his office. He had already set the school in lockdown, which seemed like the safest situation in this case. With other attacks, it was often safer to evacuate the students from the building, especially if there was a risk of the building coming on top of them. This slug only seemed intent on covering the school halls with its slime and eating anyone who came in its way. Locked doors were a better protection. There was little Mr. Morita could do now other than wait for more updates on the situation.

Barely two minutes after the slug creature arrived, Spider-Man showed up, as he had many times before to defeat other creatures and people who had come to attack the school. The Midtown School of Science and Technology was strangely popular with supervillains.

Over the radio from one of the security officers, Mr. Morita heard that after seeing Spider-Man, the slug had suddenly grown far angrier and more destructive. According to one of the security guards, Spider-Man claimed that the giant slug creature was out to target him. It was an experiment from one of his enemies gone wrong or something. Mr. Morita would hate to see what its creator made when their experiments went right.

No one had been harmed yet, but with the change in the mutated slug’s behavior, evacuation was looking to be a safer prospect. If Spider-Man was capturing all of the slug’s attention, then the students could safely leave.

Mr. Morita quickly moved into the main office which was conveniently connected to his own office. Not needing to go into the hallway to reach the main office made his life less likely to be destroyed on multiple occasions. Pushing the intercom button, he announced, “This is an emergency evacuation. Please exit the building quietly and immediately. Avoid using internal hallways, especially in the foreign language hall. Follow your teachers out of the building.” 

He continued to repeat the information with a slightly different wording, forcing his voice to remain cool and collected. Repetition and calmness was the key to directing panicking masses.

The other staff in the room had exited by the time Mr. Morita was finished. They had given him concerned glances, but obeyed when Mr. Morita made shooing gestures. Once his announcement was done, Mr. Morita returned to his office. With the slug monster fighting Spider-Man all the way on the other side of school, he knew he had enough time for it to be safe to grab a few important papers, just in case the office was destroyed.

It took him less than half a minute to grab everything he needed. But as Mr. Morita turned to go back to the main office (which was where the nearest exit outside was located), he spotted a red masked face hanging upside down in his window.

Spider-Man was trying to open the window, which was locked. Mr. Morita set down his papers to open it for him.

“Thank you, Mister Mo—!” Spider-Man cut himself off as he flipped through the window. “Thanks! The slug’s coming down this hall. I’m going to intercept it, but you should get out of here.”

Mr. Morita hesitated for a second. It didn’t feel right to leave the hero alone to fight the creature. Especially given Mr. Morita’s suspicions about Spider-Man’s true age. Still, it wasn’t like there was anything he would be able to do in a fight between them other than be a distraction. Whatever Mr. Morita’s opinions and worries were, it was a fact that Spider-Man had faced far greater foes than this slug creature and survived. He could handle this.

Just as Mr. Morita reluctantly turned to leave, a loud crash outside the door to the hallway stopped him.

“Whoops! I think that was my guy. Be right back!” Spider-Man shouted, opening the door and swinging out into the doorway. More sounds of property breaking and taunts and snarls came from the hallway, but Mr. Morita did not let himself look to see what was going on. He needed to get out of there safely and check on his students.

Mr. Morita grabbed the papers that he had returned to his office for, and went to the main office. The decision saved his life because the slug crashed through his office wall just after he left. The bits of falling rubble could have killed him if he had been any closer. The slug continued thrashing, and Mr. Morita thought that it might punch a hole through the opposite wall to the outside. Its face, he could see, was covered with Spider-Man’s webs.

Spider-Man fired a few more long strands of his sticky webs until the slug was finally stuck in the middle of the wreckage of Mr. Morita’s office. He dashed back into the hallway and when he returned to Mr. Morita’s range of sight, he was carrying a syringe which he plunged into the slug creature. Whatever was inside the syringe caused the slug to shrink back into a more natural size of a couple inches long.

“Mr. Morita?” Spider-Man called out worriedly, pushing aside a few of the larger pieces of rubble. “Are you okay?”

Spider-Man could have seen his name on the little wooden sign on his desk, Mr. Morita thought, ignoring a small but growing suspicion. He might not have already known it. 

Mr. Morita stepped out from the other room into his own office. “Yes, thank you. I made it out in time.”

“Okay. That’s good,” Spider-Man said, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Um, sorry about all this.” He waved a hand at the wreckage that was Mr. Morita’s office.

“Things would have been worse if you hadn’t shown up,” Mr. Morita said. In the current political climate, he thought it would be best to establish that he didn’t blame superheroes for the messes they helped create when they stopped destructive forces. “Nobody got hurt.”

“Right.”

Mr. Morita couldn’t see Spider-Man’s face behind his mask, but his posture was seen a lot by Mr. Morita on students who were sure they were in trouble for something, even if they weren’t quite sure for what.

Spider-Man picked up the picture of Mr. Morita’s grandfather that had fallen on the ground in the battle. The glass of its frame was cracked, but otherwise, it was in one piece. “Is this James Morita of the Howling Commandos?”

Pleased that someone had recognized him, Mr. Morita replied, “Yes. My grandfather.”

“Oh neat! You do have the same last name. I’m sorry for the damage,” Spider-Man said again.

“It’s really no problem. My grandfather wasn’t the only one who understood that superheroes are human and can’t save everything all the time. You did more than enough.” It was actually going to be a bit of a problem, but at least the school was insured against supervillain attacks so money wouldn’t be a part of it for Mr. Morita. Reassuring a superhero was worth the little lie.

“Thanks,” Spider-Man said. “Um. Well, I should get going. Stuff to do, you know?” And then he left, almost as awkwardly as one of Mr. Morita’s students did when they were sent to his office for the first time.

* * *

**5**

Mr. Morita didn’t have time to have casual conversations with students. He tried to be a friendly principal, greeting students in the halls with a warm manner. There were members of the ASB that he had spoken to enough for more official reason that he often exchanged a few pleasantries and vague questions about their personal life when they met. But it was never anything longer than that, unless he thought they were in any kind of trouble that he could help them with.

But one year, when a student asked him about his grandfather for a Veteran’s Day history project, Mr. Morita couldn’t refuse.

“It’s to humanize soldiers,” the student explained. “If we give some of them faces and personal stories by interviewing them or someone who was close to them, then it gives us a better idea of the impact of war on the individuals who went through it.”

This wasn’t the first time Mr. Morita had been asked to be interviewed for this project. His grandfather was a rather famous soldier. Talking about his grandfather felt a little personal, but Mr. Morita wouldn’t have minded if it was just one student. Being interviewed by a dozen students each year and coming up with different stories to tell them about his grandfather so that each of their projects wouldn’t be the same would take up a lot of time he didn’t have. It wouldn’t be fair to pick and choose the students he would talk to, so Mr. Morita avoided it all together.

But when Tanekazu Ishigaki asked him for an interview, Mr. Morita found himself making an exception. By now, the history teachers who assigned this project usually warned their students that they would be wasting their time by asking their principal, so few came to ask him. Yet Tanekazu had come anyway, and Mr. Morita knew why ne had. Despite the likelihood of being refused, ne probably asked him because they were both Japanese. Mr. Morita knew that there weren’t many Japanese veterans that were talked about and he knew the importance of finding role models. When a fair portion of the projects would be about soldiers who fought and killed Japanese people, it would be a relief for Tanekazu to talk about a Japanese-American one.

Before Mr. Morita could even think about the consequences of his decision, he had agreed to the interview. He would have given anything as a child for more representation and support from people with the same ethnicity as him, and now he was in a position to give that to someone else.

Mr. Morita could afford to change his rule to being only one interview per year, perhaps the first person to approach him. But he knew he had to make this exception.

“Thank you, Mr. Morita,” Tanekazu said with such genuine relief and happiness that Mr. Morita couldn’t regret his decision. Ne asked him a few basic questions about his grandfather such as his name, year of birth, the war he fought in, his jobs after the war, and so on. This was the kind of stuff that the teachers assigned and anybody could have found online.

“What did he think about working alongside Captain America?” was the first of nir own questions.

“He had a lot of respect for the man and was happy to have all the opportunities to do more that being part of the Howling Commandos gave him. I think it helped develop his sense of self-respect too. If Captain America got so much appreciation and respect from the country, then surely he deserved some too, even though most of the country was unwilling to give it to him because of his race.”

“Did the war shape his sense of national identity?”

Mr. Morita thought about the question. His grandfather had never had a conversation directly about national identity with him, but they had talked about enough similar things that he could piece together an answer. “I don’t think that fighting in it did. He felt American but also forever an outsider to both his own country and his parents’ country. He would be the first to admit both America’s and Japan’s faults, but he would also be the first to praise their successes. I think maybe that fighting in the war made him feel more like he deserved the right to be an American in the eyes others. The actual war itself made him ashamed of his Japanese side for a time, but he spent the rest of his life trying to fight that feeling.”

“Did he remain close to the people he served with in the war?”

“Yes. After a few years, they all moved on to have different lives, but they stayed in touch. I’ve met all the Howling Commandos that survived at least once, not including the super powered ones.”

“Whoa.” Tanekazu’s eyes had grown wide. Mr. Morita could see nem reluctantly drag nemself back on topic before asking the next question. “Right. What was a struggle he faced after the war?”

Mr. Morita could have spoken about PTSD and his grandfather’s readjustment to civilian life. It hadn’t been as bad as some others’ were, but it wasn’t easy by any means. He could have spoken about his family’s release from the camps and how they had struggled to make a living after nearly everything had been taken away from them, and all of the racism and monetary hardships they faced.

But Mr. Morita was talking to Tanekazu Ishigaki, and the first time he heard that name had been last year when ne announced to the whole school that ne was not a boy nor a girl and asked to have nir pronouns respected by everyone. Mr. Morita had needed to talk to the teachers and ensure that they would follow nir wishes. So Mr. Morita answered the question with something different.

“One of his biggest struggles was accepting all of who he was. It wasn’t fighting in the war that caused the problem, so much as it was the war itself. But fighting in it the way that he did changed how he dealt with the problem. A lot of Japanese-American people at the time tried even harder to assimilate after the internment camps and the treatment they received for belonging to the same ethnicity as some of the enemies that America was fighting. My mother didn’t learn a single word of Japanese from her parents because of that. But my grandfather fought against that urge. He had always made it as clear as possible that he was American, but especially during the Civil Rights movement, he began to believe that it was just as important to not ignore his Japanese heritage.”

“But the Civil Rights movement! That was like twenty years after World War II!” Tanekazu exclaimed.

“It was a long journey for him,” Mr. Morita said. “It wasn’t like he completely shunned the idea of him being Japanese before that, but he was the kind of person who would claim that the only difference between him and white Americans was skin color. Later on, he came to accept that being Japanese did influence who he was and his values in ways that other Americans never were and ignoring that was only harmful to himself. He’s the reason I know more about Japan and can speak more of the language than my own mother.

“I remember that whenever we spent an evening talking about more serious matters, he would often say to me, ‘I am going to tell you something very important. It took me decades to learn this, but I’ll make it easy for you and tell you directly. You must always remember to be proud of all of who you are, especially the parts you can’t change.’ He told me that my experiences and background made me the person I was, for the better or the worse, and forgetting about it never helped. Being all of who you were in a society that values a certain level of conformity was one of the most difficult experiences he had to go through because the struggle never stopped. But it is also one of the most important fights a person can take on, both for their own sake and for the sake of all the others like them.”

As a child, Mr. Morita’s grandfather had told him this many times in regards to his racial and ethnic identity, but he had also told Mr. Morita this when he first tentatively told his grandfather that maybe he liked boys in the same way he liked girls. Repeating the lesson was Mr. Morita’s way of offering a little more support to a fellow queer Japanese person.

In the end, he was back where he started, Mr. Morita mused. His grandfather’s philosophy had been the reason he agreed to this interview. For a moment, he felt a little guilty, thinking about all the interviews he had denied. What would his grandfather have wanted? The man had never wanted fame or attention for the sake of it, but he always aspired to inspire and encourage people by telling them his stories. Still, it was better late than never. His grandfather would have been proud of this interview, he thought.

“That’s all the questions I have,” Tanekazu said quietly. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Mr. Morita replied. “I hope this gives you a good grade on your project.”

Ne smiled. “I’m pretty sure it will.” Tanekazu stood up and began to leave but stopped before ne reached the door. “Arigato gozaimasu, Morita-sensei,” ne said, with the perfect accent that only came from first generation immigrants or those who had grown up around a strong community of them.

“Doitashimasute,” Mr. Morita replied. Despite his best efforts, a trace of his American-ness always shone through when he tried to speak Japanese. But for once, he didn’t feel guilty or embarrassed about that. After all, his ancestors had fought so hard to be both American and Japanese, and this conversation had reminded him to feel proud of all of who he was.

* * *

**+1**

Because he was the principal of a high school, Mr. Morita tried to stay out of politics when it didn’t directly concern the well-being of his students. Even so, he couldn’t help but support Captain America on the whole Sokovia Accords debacle. Not blatantly, of course, but there was a reason he kept all the cheesy Captain America educational videos, even after he was declared a criminal. Wanting to protect individual privacy and rights should not be a crime, in Mr. Morita’s opinion, though he did wish that the whole situation had been handled differently. And it wasn’t like Captain America still wasn’t a role model and hero in a myriad of other ways.

Mr. Morita never imagined that he would be able to show his support in person.

The school had just been attacked by some duck-themed supervillain. It was far more terrifying than it sounded. (His husband, he knew, would spend the entire evening laughing about it, after he was certain Mr. Morita was fine.) For some reason, the villain thought that Spider-Man was a student at his school. Mr. Morita thought that it might be safest for everyone if he didn’t try to investigate that claim any further. 

Spider-Man had indeed shown up to fight the villain surprisingly quickly, but he had only been able to hold off the Ugly Duckling for so long. The Ugly Duckling (what kind of villain named themselves after a fairy tale character anyway?) apparently wanted to destroy the school and everyone in it as some sort of revenge for something that Spider-Man had done. With Spider-Man losing badly, it seemed that the Ugly Duckling would succeed. But just when it seemed that hope was lost for those who hadn’t yet evacuated the area, Captain America showed up.

Mr. Morita watched in amazement as his childhood hero beat the duck person and tied them up for the authorities to arrest. Unfortunately, Captain America was still a fugitive, so when the police surrounded the area, he vanished. With the villain caught and Captain America nowhere in sight, the police soon left. The Ugly Duckling, in the end, hadn’t done much damage, to either the people or the buildings. Spider-Man, it seemed, had taken the brunt of his attacks. Mr. Morita sent the students home early and returned to his office. The amount of paperwork he would have to fill out regarding this incident made him exhausted just to think about it.

But when Mr. Morita opened the door to his office, all thoughts of paperwork immediately fled his mind. In the middle of the room stood Captain America, his eyes fixed on the photograph of Mr. Morita’s grandfather. Mr. Morita froze in the entrance.

Captain America turned to look at him. “You must be his grandson,” he said softly. “You look so much like him.”

“C-captain,” Mr. Morita stammered, trying to regain his composure.

“I apologize for letting myself into here,” he said. “I had to find somewhere out of the police’s way. I wasn’t planning on staying long.”

“No—no, it’s okay,” Mr. Morita said, forcing his voice to settle into something more normal sounding. “Don’t rush away on my account.”

“Thank you,” Captain America said. “You were close to your grandfather?” He glanced back up at the photograph.

“Yes. He spoke a lot about you, you know. Said you were one of the greatest men he knew. I was raised of stories of your heroic adventures. You were my only real celebrity crush. That feels a bit weird now that I look older than you.” Mr. Morita stopped, wincing internally. He hadn’t meant to say that, but he had a tendency to ramble when flustered.

But Captain America only laughed. “He was one of the best men I knew too. I’m sorry he passed away before I got to see him again.”

“I’m sure he would be sorry too,” Mr. Morita said. It really was sad that his grandfather hadn't had the chance to see his old friend again.

They both turned to look back up at the picture of Jim Morita on the wall, standing there for a quiet moment.

“What were you doing here in the first place?” Mr. Morita finally asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. “You don’t normally show up to fight villains at high schools, especially since you were declared an outlaw.”

“It’s a long story, but I became a friend of P—Spider-Man. He was unexpectedly attacked, so he called for help. I was in the area so...” Captain America shrugged.

“So Spider-Man does go to this school.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

Mr. Morita laughed. “There have been too many strange things going on here, this past year. I think I already knew.”

“I’m sorry for the damage and chaos that he’s brought here. If Spider-Man was here, I’m sure he would say the same.”

“It’s fine,” Mr. Morita said. “I understand. He isn’t the one causing the damage. You’re both just trying your best to stop the people causing the harm from getting away with doing more. Thank you, Captain America, for helping us out.”

“It was nothing,” he replied. “And call me Steve. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Morita.”

“Call me James.”

“I’ll see you around, James,” Steve Rogers said, turning around to leave.

“Not in circumstances like these, I hope,” James Morita said.

Smiling, Steve Rogers opened the door, walking past the astonished PE teacher who froze, gaping after the superhero.

“Was—was that—?” the teacher started.

“Just a family friend,” James Morita said.


End file.
